Over a Century of Muslim Stereotypes and Negative Spotlight In the Silver Screen
"You can hit an Arab for free, they are free enemies, free villains-- where you couldn't do it to a Jew or you can't do it to a black man" -Sam Keen
Cinema has had a lengthy history of perpetuating prejudices toward ethnic groups that goes all the way back to its conception. Asians were seen as "sneaky", Africans as "sombo", Indians as "savages" and Hispanics as "greasy" and Italians as "Mafios". As time has passed these offensive stereotypes and prejudices have dwindled away in cinema and by current times are no longer tolerated in cinema with the exception of the Muslims community. If anything as the decades went on Muslims and Arabs in cinema have been portrayed more as oil-rich, religious fanatics and hostile towards non-Muslims and westerners. A lot of this has to do with the long history of interaction with the Middle East dating all the way back to Middle Ages but the recent spike in anti-Muslim sentiment and Islamophobic propaganda ran by Hollywood has been a result of foreign policy, government influence, tension in the Middle East during the 80's and 90's leading to the Gulf war and the Sept. 11th attack.
Here are some article of recently praised islamaphobic movies which you might have recently seen
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chapel-hill-shooting-american-sniper-behind-rise-in-islamophobia-in-us-says-leading-arab-advocate-10039565.html
http://socialistworker.org/2013/02/27/islamophobia-on-the-red-carpet
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/15/winner-islamophobia-argo-homeland
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Here is short montage of Hollywood's villification and dehumanization of Muslims in Cinema
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